By Lauren Luna
Iridian Pineda, a fourth-year Latin American and Iberian Studies student.
Iridian Pineda, a fourth-year Latin American and Iberian Studies (LAIS) major with a minor in Education is integrating both of her degree areas of specialization in her work with the Community Based Literacies (CBL), run by the Gevirtz School of Education.
Currently at UCSB, 28% of students identify as Latinx, accounting for the largest ethnic minority on campus. As the first interdisciplinary program at UCSB, the Latin American and Iberian Studies (LAIS) undergraduate major includes classes from nearly 19 different departments, including anthropology, sociology, environmental science, and music.
Pineda applies what she has learned in Latin American Studies to her activities with Community Based Literacies. The program builds critical reading and communication skills among young children in the Isla Vista community, near campus. Among its goals is eliminating cultural biases, both in the texts distributed to children and in the ways their reading is evaluated.
Recently, Pineda sat down for an interview to discuss the LAIS major and her work in education.
Q: What inspired you to pursue a major in Latin American and Iberian Studies?
A: It actually wasn’t my first option going into UCSB. LAIS came up later when I was in school and it sounded interesting to me, mainly because it’s an interdisciplinary department. I really love learning about different subjects, and I don’t feel like I specifically fit into one niche. I’ve always liked mathematics, economics, literature, writing, and speech. All these things were offered through LAIS.
Q: Why do you think it’s important to have a LAIS program on campus?
A: There’s a lot about Latin American history that goes off record. Going through the American education system, I often felt like I was reading someone else’s history. I find LAIS classes fascinating, especially when learning about the many languages embodied in Latin American history. There are thousands of [indigenous] languages in Latin America alone, apart from Spanish and Portuguese. In these classes, you just learn so much more about narratives that have been erased from our history books.
Q: Why did you join Community Based Literacies?
A: I would say that I joined because I wanted a challenge and I wanted to further understand how I could help students and their comprehension of readings. It’s something that I personally struggled with and my goal is to create a text that is more open-minded, critical, and inclusive than ones in the past.
Q: You’re a LAIS major who is also minoring in education. How do you integrate the two degrees with the Community Based Literacies program?
A: When I was working with the program fall quarter, I wrote about Indigenous Peoples’ Day, which used to be called Columbus Day. I adapted an article about it into a more child-friendly text for the project. I think what inspired me to do that was the fact that, as a kid, I’d have these examinations about “Columbus Day” and names of ships. I still don’t know why I learned that “La Pinta” was a ship because it didn’t mean much in relation to larger Latin American history– my own history. I wanted to present the real story of Latin American colonialism in a kid-friendly way because I never got to learn that when I was a child myself.
Q: What would you tell someone wanting to pursue a path like yours in the future?
A: Look through your options. You don’t have to be perfect in one area, but I feel like being educated in every sphere in this major has made me more educated overall, even outside Latin American and Iberian Studies. It’s made me a better speaker, writer, and critical thinker.
Lauren Luna is a second-year UC Santa Barbara student majoring in anthropology. She wrote this article for her Writing Program class, Journalism for Web and Social Media.